‘The Trouble With Men’- Frameworks For African Masculinities¹

By Lincoln Theo

Personal Context

  I am African, by South African birth and upbringing, and by feeling that I belong in Africa. My South African ‘white', English-speaking, middle-class social identity often results in incorrect assumptions about my intentions, feelings and self-identity, and presumptions that I do or should subscribe to certain ideals, aspirations and frames of reference. As Dr Kopano Ratele says:

  “Another form of the Identity Puzzle that could be taken up is that even in the new society the name African, for instance, does not seem to ‘stick' on white South African bodies or white citizens of Zimbabwe. The puzzling aspect is that this is even when the owner of the body him- or herself wants to take the identity of African on.” [1]

  This is certainly true of my experience of whiteness, and the corollary is equally appropriate to my experience with maleness. People of all social and cultural backgrounds often assume my ‘maleness', even though I cannot unpack what that might mean beyond biology.

  I am forced to think critically about frameworks of representation and identity in a broader context, particularly those pertaining to masculinities, and further to attempt to undermine expectations through my body, which I have tattooed, pierced and surgically modified as physical and emotional ‘re-invention', and of social activism, publicly rejecting restrictive norms and incorporating global and local historical and contemporary collective wisdom. I acknowledge the possibility of transcending essentialist conceptions of human-ness, and of making real connections to all people, irrespective of upbringing and socio-political affiliations. I see the product (of both body and intent) as a melding of ideas of many cultures and many times, while not valorising any of them as being the panacea of the world's or my own ills.

Masculinities

  In South Africa, as in (most) other countries, maleness is predominantly understood in opposition to femaleness, and masculinities are understood as inhering only in biologically male bodies. Yet many people's bodies tell other stories. Some ‘masculine' people are outright male in construction, some female, and some indeterminately sexed. Many don't perform traditionally gendered social roles, the definitions of which are difficult to specify using traditional western conceptions of ‘masculinity' and ‘femininity'. The assumptions are highly simplistic and are discredited as approaches to gendered thinking, yet they still hold sway.

  If we engage endlessly in intellectualised discourses too rarified for real-world application, or if we engage simplistic strategic organisational plans aimed at change without critical reference to philosophical and theoretical frameworks, both without reference to real individuals in material reality, we are merely exacerbating global dysfunctions.

Premises For African Social Frameworks

  Colonial and globalising commercial forces often perpetuate the view of Africa as homogenous and singular, with little substantial social or cultural diversity or local flavour, or varied performances of masculinities[2]. At the same time the uncomfortable colonial fictions of nationhood insist on inward-looking, insular and restrictive specifications of identities and ways of being[3]. Unfortunately many African systems and leaders perpetuate these approaches in claims that certain lifestyles are ‘un-African' ‘imported' from ‘the outside' and therefore subject to derision and control, which is blatantly untrue[3]. Many Africans are aware of the intimate difficulties inherent in working with cultural and social identity, (in which I include gender and sexual orientation), either imposed from the outside or willingly absorbed from the inside, and most often both in (discordant) concert, often based on a combination of indigenous perspectives and historical western influences, and resulting in what could be described as a melting-pot of invented selves.

  Essentialist arguments that rationality and linear thought, human rights, feminist or queer discourses are inherently Western and therefore subject to suspicion outside of the West, or indeed that a pre-colonial Africa defines the ‘essence' of what is African, are as much inappropriate, essentialist ‘grand narratives' as those that prescribe a ‘national' or ‘African' social or cultural flavour. So is the idea that all humans are and should be subject to a single set of rules and structures. Grand narratives are subject to suspicion in localised spaces where individuals' and communities' relationships at least partially rely on perspectives of regional and local cultures and social norms and of individuals' personal perspectives.

  Perhaps we should be more concerned with processes and activities rather than identities, which are, of course fluid and at least in part performed.

Alternative Ways Forward? Two Discourse Premises To Work With

  Contemporary paradigms for social change are often framed either in simple human-rights-based or in post-colonial, revisionist historical paradigms.

  Alternative conceptions beyond those based on combative identity politics, which set poles of ‘identity' against one another should be explored, as should the possibility of accessing contextualised discourses beyond overly simplified post-colonialist or deconstructionist frameworks, which at times focus only on what is wrong with the world, with little conception of what comes after.

  Perhaps one way of conceiving ‘what next?' in the post-post-modernist post-post-colony is to explore integrative rather than exclusionary ideals. One of the strengths of many African societies is a foundation in community, rather than the polarised individuality characterising much post-enlightenment western thinking. Yet the individual in community transfers social and cultural norms, and potentially can effect change on micro- and macro-scales. If individuals are empowered to step outside their conceptions of possible self-definition and -determination, while retaining community consciousness, perhaps they can shift dysfunctions and co-create communities based on respect for self and others.

  Such potential ‘organic reconstructionist' and inclusive frameworks, whose roots may lie in both western and indigenous thinking, may be useful starting-points for developing tools with which to interrogate and revise ideas of what people do, and the implications of their relations. It is possible to relate insights from human-rights debates to post-colonialist conceptions of Africa, looking at the hybrid nature of societies, rather than as of a singular culture, society, sex, gender, sexual orientation or whatever else.²

  More specifically, it may not be necessary to choose between readings of male-female relations as either being a function of human-rights discourses where anything less than gender equity is seen as patriarchal violence, or exclusively from an ‘indigenous' perspective where women's roles, responsibilities and social support systems might traditionally have neutralised the (negative) power of men.

  One framework worth more exploration may be that of personal body narratives in performances of masculinities, as approached by postcolonialist and postmodernist conceptions of power, feminisms and queer theories, which have informed and instructed approaches to power relations of the marginalized. These can inform how the ‘empowered', including men, might revise their roles and adopt others incorporating them into a broader populace while remaining vigilant over power struggles inherent in patriarchy, religious conservatism, economic and political influence.

  Another conception worthy of exploration might be re-visioning social relations beyond body-based, material constructions. African relationships between the human body, the non-human body, organic and inorganic things traditionally held meanings incomprehensible to proto-rationalist and religious conceptions of European explorers. Today, Africans continue to relate with ancestors and divinities both within and outside the context of centrally organised religion, which conceptions are often inimical to modern, globalised social frameworks based on western post-enlightenment conceptions of logic, materiality, and commercial value. Perhaps re-visioning this kind of cultural wealth in light of both current performances of self and modern globalised identities can help develop empowered senses of African-ness and self-identification, including masculinities.

Conclusions (Or Rather Perhaps A Place To Start?)

  None of this is new. However, it is perhaps important to revisit linkages coherent in terms of historical and theoretical trajectories, while remaining closely connected to the people whose daily lives are impacted by the frameworks that are constructed.

  Approaches based purely on linear thinking can pathologise people, which can relegate individuals to dependencies on benign social structures to grant status- or life-experience-validity, and therefore the ability to effect personal and community change.

  Alternatively, enforcing human-rights approaches beyond ensuring ‘freedom from' can be linked to dependencies on benign social structures ready to grant objectively-determinable pre-existing rights to equality. It is important to acknowledge the equal value of all humans, but certain human-rights-paradigms support the binary separations of, for example, men and women, rather than undermining them, resulting in the ongoing need to police power-relations (for example gender-based ones) rather than shifting conceptions of what it means to be male or female, the latter which could contribute to a shift over time of the very concept of power as we understand it.

Endnotes

¹ This opinion is not an in-depth discussion of masculinities in Africa, nor is intended as rigorous academic exploration or substantive social commentary, but is largely to help me to contextualise my PhD exploring gay male fetish sexuality in South Africa, and in my ongoing attempts to frame personal experiences and social environments.

² In this context I use the concept of hybridity as espoused by Bhabha

References

1. Kopano R. (2006) Contradictions in Constructions of African Masculinities, on ARSRC website (http://www.arsrc.org) Assessed 20/10/2007

2. Butler.J ( 1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity- (New York, Routledge,

3. Bhabha, HK (ed) (1990), Nation and Narration, Routledge, London & New York

* Lincoln Theo is a PhD Candidate in the Women's and Gender Studies Dept at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa. He is a non-practising attorney, legal consultant, social studies lecturer and is actively involved in the film industry in production and scriptwriting.

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